Many people still wonder: Are Nuclear Weapons real? Certainly, they can be destructive, but the yields of these weapons are far below those of their strategic counterparts. For example, a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could result in twenty fissile warheads destroying the equivalent area of nearly three million acres. Those effects could put a billion people’s food supply at risk. But what is the yield of these weapons?
The possibility that these weapons can cause mutations in human populations is not new. Scientists have known for decades that DNA damage from the bomb’s production and testing is inevitable. However, if the bomb could have caused mutations in humans, that would be wrong. Genetic mutations are also natural aberrations, so scientists could not have asserted that the events of 9/11 were the cause of the increase in cancer and birth defects. In addition, the development and testing of the hydrogen bomb raises ethical issues and creates a template for future nuclear use.
As a matter of fact, nuclear weapons have only been used to kill people twice in human history, but they still threaten to do so. Two hundred and fifty nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in the final days of World War II proved that human beings are capable of destroying a city. In fact, one nuclear explosion could destroy an entire city, while a few thousand overflowed a modern city could kill tens of millions of people. While it is impossible to know the exact number of such bombs, there are some known sources of radiation.
As a matter of fact, the United States and the Soviet Union had approximately 7,000 nuclear warheads at the end of the Cold War. By 2010, China had 240 warheads in its stockpile, of which only 180 were operational. The rest were either in reserve or retirement. The stockpiles of these weapons increased to over seven thousand by the early 1960s. While these numbers are still alarming, it is still important to note that the United States and Russia both ceased the production of nuclear weapons in the mid-1960s.
In addition to being very expensive, the existing arsenal of nuclear weapons is far from easy to obtain by terrorists. Most of them are stored in highly secure facilities guarded by elite troops. The dangers associated with stealing these weapons are so high that they would almost certainly become duds. The fact that no terrorists have yet carried out a nuclear strike suggests that the stolen nuclear weapons were duds. As far as the rumors of the existence of nuclear weapons, they have sophisticated electronic locks to prevent theft.
The Soviet Union exhibited a nuclear test in 1961. The resulting explosion was estimated to produce 51,000 kilotons of explosive energy. The blast had a 60-kilometer radius and lasted for a full six hours. That means that a single nuke could wipe out entire cities. The world nuclear arsenal stands at more than 13,000 warheads. If these weapons were ever used, the world would surely be destroyed.
What is the source of nuclear energy? There are two main sources of nuclear energy: fission and fusion. A nuclear warhead can release more explosive energy than the entire arsenal of weapons used in World War II. During the war, two atom bombs were dropped on Japan. They had a devastating effect on the Japanese people. One of them, called Fat Man, was reportedly dropped in the Pacific Ocean. As a result, they lasted less than a second in the sky, and they killed thousands of people in the process.
If the world were to become a nuclear world, third countries would feel compelled to act in nuclear conflicts and disputes. Some countries, like Israel, might feel compelled to intervene and make use of nuclear weapons in major conflicts. Those trends would be very different from the way we imagine our world today. So, if nuclear weapons are real, why are they so dangerous? Let’s examine these trends in detail.
A nuclear explosion produces a flash of hot gas that vaporizes human tissue. In a few seconds after a one-megaton explosion, a fireball of superheated air begins to form. Within a mile-diameter radius, the fireball glows from its own heat. The glow from the fireball can cause damage to electronic equipment. In a nuclear war, billions of people could die.